Community Health Needs Assessment

Assessing community health needs and developing the appropriate plans to address these needs are essential to improving and sustaining the health of our communities. To do so, we must understand our community, the needs identified and the process for moving forward to improve the health of Baton Rouge. Both a primary and shared focus among healthcare organizations is responding to the health needs of our communities. More recently, we are encouraged to develop initiatives that incorporate multiple healthcare organizations to collaborate with available and upcoming resources to offer effective and positive impacts on the community. And more specifically, the concept of a Community Health Needs Assessment is now reinforced by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which contains new requirements for tax-exempt hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments and to adopt implementation strategies to meet the health needs identified through the assessments.